SO the statue of Jimmy Hill looks set to be in place for the start of next season and I for one look forward to seeing it.

Jimmy's health isn't too good at the moment but it would be nice if the great man himself will get to see it in all its glory because he deserves this accolade for all he did for our club.

I remember when he took over as manager back in the sixties; I was a schoolboy and had just started going to Highfield Road with my late father, with all us kids down at the front of the Spion Kop end of the ground with the parents looking down on us from up high on the terraces.

He changed everything about the club in his first season in charge, bringing in lots of new players, a new kit so we now became the Sky Blues, a new club song, and lots of fresh and innovative ideas never seen before at the football club.

I do recall my dad saying at the time that he thought he was a bit flash for his liking, and a lot of die-hard supporters said they thought it was all just a gimmick, and as we know us Coventrians can be a hard lot to please.

But all that cynicism changed when we couldn't stop winning games and all Jimmy's ideas came to fruition, and even my stick-in-the-mud dad had to admit that the bearded one was the best thing to have happened to his beloved club.

As we get to see now and again at the Ricoh when the club are playing well and they play a big club the fans do turn up for the games, but as a lad all I knew was being packed in like a sardine surrounded by a mass of Sky Blue and seeing the likes of Hudson, Rees, Humphries, and Curtis doing the business week in and week out.

Jimmy was a breath of fresh air and not just for the football club, but for the whole city of Coventry; he made people sit up and take notice.

Yes he was larger than life and he did have the touch of the showbiz about him, but us fans didn't care less about all that because to us he was a winner, we even enjoyed all the razzmatazz because we were winning games and promotion.

So he put us on the football map and we went from being just an ordinary third division outfit to a first division team.

Yws, it's been a long rollercoaster ride with lot' of twists and turns along the way, but my love of the club is down to Jimmy Hill so I give thanks to him for that.